


underneath the underneath

by lionxdog



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22895725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lionxdog/pseuds/lionxdog
Summary: prompt: in 100 or more words write a short story about Uzumaki Kushina getting kidnapped at a mission and placed in some slow moving death trap.non-graphic, bad end. spoilers for the series.
Relationships: Kyuubi | Nine-tails | Kurama & Uzumaki Kushina
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	underneath the underneath

**Author's Note:**

> in 100 or more words write a short story about Uzumaki Kushina getting kidnapped at a mission and placed in some slow moving death trap.
> 
> spoiler alert for the naruto series. i can't think of titles

in 100 or more words write a short story about Uzumaki Kushina getting kidnapped at a mission and placed in some slow moving death trap.

spoiler alert for the naruto series 

kitsune narrows her eyes at her quarry, still as death from her perch high in the treetops. ‘they never think to look up,’ she thinks, scoffing internally at their lack of awareness for their surroundings, and moves to cut the line holding the trap together. her handiwork snaps up two jounin and a chunin in a neat little package, nice and tidy: a network of chakra wire warps up from the forest floor, scattering leaf litter and dust into the air as it encompasses the three shinobi. 

as it turns out, there were four, and the last one has set his own trap for her in turn. ‘fucking kiri,’ kushina thinks, snarling as the line she had cut ends up being the trail he’d followed, right to her perch. there’s a fight, short and quick and nasty, and kushina is about to draw on kyuubi’s strength when the dust in the air from her earlier trap spreads, mist drawing the microscopic particles of dirt in the air right towards her to trap her in a makeshift clay prison. fire burns it away quickly, and kyuubi’s raging chakra looses her hair to rise wildly about her shoulders.   
konohagakure’s very own habanero has arrived in the field. 

it isn’t until she skids, chakra slipping her grip on the damp forest floor, that kushina realizes she isn’t working right. her thoughts are coming slower, the silhouettes of the trees around them blurring, and it isn’t only the mist that’s… making them blurry. 

it’s drugged, kushina realizes too late. ‘the mist isn’t water; it’s a sleepy. tired drug.’ she can’t find the word she knows, and she’s studied seals and anatomy and chakra theory right alongside minato, and he’s just as bright as her that he’d picked up on uzushio’s works like singing a song. 

kushina shakes her head, panting, can’t get enough air in behind the porcelain-steel of her anbu mask. the four of them-- four? when had-- 

kushina’s head feels funny. she frowns, eyes closed, shakes her head-- that’s when she notices her mouth is dry, and she can’t move the sheet from her face. 

the fact that it’s not a bedsheet dawns slowly. confusion dominates, first: where is she? and then her last memory resurfaces, the three man team that had actually been four, how she’d set a trap and they’d trapped her in doing it, how they’d drugged her with mist. kushina runs a quick diagnostic of her situation, trying to dislodge the thing in her mouth as she considers her vertigo, the rank taste in her dry mouth, the change in humidity, the complication of their setup she’d fallen for. 

she’s been tossed over someone’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes, probably the biggest asshole, then. oshiro, she recalls from surveillance. most likely to depart from leadership’s orders should opinions differentiate, therefore most likely to just kill her to spare himself the trouble of lugging her around. 

she’s gagged, most likely something she doesn’t want to consider shoved into her mouth, but she still can’t tell if the bitter, sour flavor is from the drugged mist or from the unwashed fabric. it’s held in place by a long strip of cloth tied around her head, holding her hair tight to the base of her neck. her arms are bound behind her back, close and tight in what feels like a complicated tie. she can’t get her hands together to mold chakra. she can’t reach up to pluck her hairs like she had before for minato. she can’t reach down to her pack-- her belt pack is gone, likely confiscated, and when she flexes her thigh subtly, not only is her thigh holster gone, but her legs are bound together. she can feel a lot of rope on her body, and hadn’t seen near enough before to bind someone so thoroughly as she is now, and the trap within a trap and the drugged mist and the absurdly excessive amounts of rope and the lack of access to her chakra means oshiro and company are very, very good at planning ahead, and she should possibly be very, very worried. 

not only is she konohagakure’s red hot-blooded habanero and anbu, uzumaki kushina is the jinchuriki of the kyuubi no kitsune. 

she takes the chance. kushina waits until the apex of their next running step, arches back subtly enough that gravity could be blamed for the sudden shifting of her body, and curls forward hard and fast, aiming to knee-kick-neuter oshiro. she hits her target, and oshiro curls forward with a broken, gasping moan. kushina slams into the ground. the impact costs her all the air in her lungs, and the struggle for breath slows her response time too long to escape, even without the rope securing her wrists and arms and goddamn legs. 

there’s the metal-on-metal slide of a blade being drawn, but kushina’s still gasping for breath like a fish out of water, desperately trying to draw air into her emptied lungs. the gag gives for nothing, and she’s left wriggling uselessly in damp leaf litter like a worm. her head is dizzy again, but she won’t give up without a fight, dammit! kushina finally achieves air and promptly tries hollering around the gag, muffled threats coming through until she’s kicked right in the diaphragm. 

fuck. 

kushina loses all her air again, and this time when her nostrils flare and she struggles for breath, she gets a faceful of that same fucking drug again. 

oshiro has gathered himself much better than kushina has. he stands to his full height, gruffly irritated and murderously silent. 

“i can’t wait to get this bitch back to base,” kushina hears him say. the black sclera of his eyes seem to glow with malice, and the intensity of his expression rivals that of kakashi’s, masks and all. her head swims, and she flails weakly, the rope keeping her mostly still. she stills entirely of her own surprise when oshiro speaks again. “the sooner we get the kyuubi out, the sooner the bitch shuts the fuck up.” 

it shouldn’t surprise her. not really. jinchurikis are bingo-book material even without s-class rank and her unique skillset and knowledge of an obliterated country. 

everything comes together as the world spins and tilts out from under her again: this team is very, very prepared. her last thought before she loses consciousness again is a memory of minato, telling of his time in grass country once: “you think you’re hunting the tiger, but the whole time, the tiger is hunting you.” 

kushina wakes up supine. she keeps her eyes closed. her breath rate doesn’t change. 

it is not for lack of trying. it is simply that she cannot move: her body is entirely unresponsive to her demands. 

a scream builds inside her. it does not come out. it can not come out.

kushina’s breath rate doesn’t change. her eyes stay closed. 

static flickers around her, multiple sources, several directions. she counts three separate flickers, independent of audible echo, which hopefully means she’s right and there are three sources of static and she’s not hallucinating already. 

kushina can feel the panic begin to well up, and forces herself to concentrate. she’s the goddam habanero of konoha. she can do this. 

a voice speaks from her left, six-o’clock towards her feet, but it’s carried from a distance. male, strong, impatient: “are we all here?” 

“no,” she hears oshiro speak, grumpier than before. “hidan’s still whining about my stitches.” 

static speaks from her right. “are you telling us, kakuzu, that i’m here from fucking suna and that bitch hidan can’t get his shit together from the same fucking cave?” 

“go get him,” static speaks from kushina’s left, and with a different voice she can differentiate: the first static voice was male, but this one is a woman, which is a relief to be in a room and not be surrounded entirely by men while she lies helpless on her back. it bodes less well, though, that there is another static source unaccounted for; without access to her chakra, she can’t reach out and feel who else is in the supposed cave. 

oshiro-- or kakuzu, she thinks hazily, walks away, footsteps not as ninja-silent on the floor of the echoing cavern as they were in the forest on the border of fire country. 

“you must be wondering why you’re here,” another voice speaks. this one is male, raspy, and present. a giggle sounds too close to the same source for kushina to identify, and the quality of the laughter, as well as the context, sends the coldest non-shiver down her spine. it raises the hairs on the back of her neck; goosebumps zip down her arms. whatever’s been done to her can’t have control of those reactions, at least. 

the elder voice speaks again: “i would like to apologize formally, uzumaki-san. the destruction of your village was… necessary. your predecessors were a dangerous… people.” 

“‘that bitch mito,’ you always said, madara-sama!” the young insane person says, glee high in the air. 

kushina’s been kidnapped by insane people, she thinks wildly. madara’s been dead since before her time, as has the first hokage’s wife and her own relative, two generations back. she still can’t move, though, and by the time the insane old man describes the state of the world, the scream inside kushina has built almost loud enough to drown him out. a sharingan on the moon? sacrificing all the jinchuriki to extract the bijuu?? 

“the moon moves every day, asshole!” kushina wants to scream. “humans die of dehydration after a few weeks! everyone you want to hypnotize is just going to die! that defeats the whole purpose of your stupid plan!” 

kushina can’t speak, though. she cannot scream. her breath rate does not change. her eyes stay closed. 

oshiro-kakuzu’s footsteps grow into being again, followed by a low muttering from his teammate: ito isn’t ito, but hidan. 

a clap sounds, feeble old hands coming together once. the sound echoes in the cavernous chamber, far below the earth, far from the sun and the wind and minato’s bright eyes and easy laughter. 

it takes hours to build up to the act. kushina has to stay still and silent for everyone to concentrate, focus chakra, focus on drawing the inferno that is kurama from kushina’s soul. kurama rages against it, digs his claws into her, snarls and howls and lashes out, and kushina screams herself hoarse right along with him, inside where she can scream. 

it takes hours. the whole time, kushina cannot scream. her breath rate does not change. her eyes stay closed. 

inside, kushina and kurama rage.


End file.
